AN: Because Deckstein is kind of really fucking adorable and I've decided I love them more than life itself.

Summary: In which Dov falls in love with Gail, Chris falls in love with Dov, and Gail is having none of their bullshit.

Warnings/Tags: Deckstein, OT3, Polyamory, Friends-to-lovers, Didn't know they were dating, Obliviousness, Boys are stupid, Gail Peck is better than well everyone, Domestic, Fluff, Little bit of angst, Happy ending

Disclaimer: I don't own "Rookie Blue". You can tell because Gail Peck isn't the main character, which she would be if I did. But I don't. So...fanfiction.

Slowly, and Then All at Once
(Like Falling Asleep)

Chapter One
Dov

It starts like this:

Gail is incredibly vocal in bed. Like, incredibly. Like Dov can hear her even when he sleeps with his headphones blaring on full blast, incredibly. He thinks it might be her secret superpower, ability to turn anything and everything into an acidic barb not withstanding. Because there's no way a human being should be able to reach that kind of volume. It's just not naturally possible. It isn't.

The first time it happens, Dov gives Chris a discreet fistbump and a grin, halfway through a comment on making the ice-queen melt when Gail enters the room with al her...Gail-ness and Chris is giving him that small-town boy look that silently chastises Dov for every decision he's ever made that didn't end with Dov in church.

The second time it happens, Dov withholds his fistbump-not that Chris seems to miss it-and tries giving Chris's small town boy look to the man himself. Gail asks him what his face is doing and why, and Chris smirks a little into his coffee cup, and Dov gives up the ghost. He doesn't say anything either, because Gail has a take-home permit for her gun and Chris would probably help her hide the body because, you know, love.

The third time it happens, Dov leaves in the middle. He, unlike the banshee seducing his best friend, is only human, and he needs some fucking sleep.

Chris apologizes later, at the station. He's grinning like an idiot-which, okay, deserved, because he'd made Gail Peck scream for hours last night and good for him-but sincere. Dov forgives him, because of course he forgives him. Chris is his best friend and his roommate and his partner oftentimes, and there's very little Dov would begrudge him. A few nights of incredibly loud sex with one of the hottest officers in their unit doesn't make the list.

They're a little quieter after that. But not much. Because Dov can still totally hear Gail, only now the sound is slightly muffled and distorted, and it's giving Dov thoughts. Bad thoughts about bad things. Like, is Chris pressing his hand over her mouth? Or, maybe he's trying to swallow her sounds with a kiss? Or, does Gail trust Chris enough to let him use a gag?

And this is somehow so much worse.


Or maybe it starts like this:

Gail hogs the bathroom. Like, all the time. Like Dov can't remember the last time he took a shower that wasn't cut off ten minutes in because the hot water's run out. And it's infuriating.

He does not hide his displeasure. This is his apartment, too, not their little love shack, and he has a basic human right to take a nice, hot shower in the mornings.

"GAIL!" He's hammering his fist against the door, and Gail is humming. In the shower. Where she's been for the last half hour. He needs to pee, he needs to shave, and he needs to take a goddammed shower. "GAIL!"

"I'm in the shower, Dov!" She shouts back, vitrol and venom, like he's the bad guy in this situation. Like he's the villain robbing the household of hot water and bathroom usage. Like he doesn't know she's in the shower, using up the hot water and the space and pissing him off.

"Yes. You are in the shower. Get out of the shower."

"I haven't finished!"

Chris is laughing at them-laughing, the fucker-in the living room. He's laughing because he got to shower with Gail, and therefore does not have to deal with being pelted with icicles halfway through washing his hair. Jackass.

"Dude." Dov thinks that Chris, as his best friend, should be able to intuitively understand that the rest of that sentence contains way too many expeltives to ever be spoken aloud.

"I'll talk to her." Chris says, but he's still trying to hide his damn smile, and Dov isn't fooled for a second.

Silently, and with extreme reluctance, Dov wishes his hot morning showers a fond goodbye.


Or it might have started like this:

Gail is better than him at video games.

Gail is better than him at video games.

She blows his character away, again, and lets out this little laugh of victory that Dov hates with a passion greater than any he's ever known and also...doesn't. It's weird. He doesn't like it.

He tries switching the games out, like maybe she's just genetically predisposed towards first person shooters, on account of her family being blue bloods for generations and breeding for perfection. She beats his Mario Kart record-which he has held uncontested for three years-in their first race. After lapping him.

She does this victory dance/shake/shimmer thing, and for a moment, Dov forgets to be mad. Mostly because he finds himself staring at her and having really bad, naughty, wrong thoughts. Then he remembers himself and shuts that line of thought down. Hard.

He's going to hell.

Gail is his best friend's girl, and Dov doesn't even like her most of the time, and, nope, Dov is so not going there. No matter how beautiful she looks flushed with victory or how clearly he can add serious sound effects to that little dance that make it so much worse than it is.

She kicks his ass at Halo, Black Ops, Need for Speed, Bioshock, and fucking DeathDomain long into the night and deep into the early morning, long after they should have gone to bed because they have a shift tomorrow morning. She does her little dance after every win, and Dov stops trying not to watch somewhere around midnight, after Chris goes to bed with a smile-like this is the best day ever because his best friend and his girlfriend are finally getting along.

They have to prop themselves up with Redbull, Monster, and coffee at parade, but Chris looks so damn happy, and Gail's perpetual gloating is almost kind of fond, and Dov can't bring himself to regret it. Except for those moments when he had watched her in the only way he never, ever should.

He tells her she's awesome. Because it had been a bet, and he had to. Because she needed to hear it. Because he honestly thinks it's true.


It probably started like this:

Dov forgot to charge his iPod. This shouldn't be as big a deal as it is, but Gail and Chris are going at it again, and, jesus, he's hearing every high, needy moan and every roughly growled curse and...

He's hard.

He doesn't want to be. This is so far out of the realm of okay, listening to his buddy bang his girl, and kind of getting off on it.

But all he can hear is Gail. Fucking Gail getting fucked and fucking liking it. And all he can see is Gail. Smug Gail with her little dances and her little towel and her little life mixing with all together with his.

It wasn't fair. He hadn't asked for this, okay? He doesn't even really like Gail all that much, except for when he kind of really does. It's confusing, and it's stupid,because Gail certainly doesn't even like him back. Except her sighs are kind of fond these days and her eye rolls are maybe affectionate and her barks have less bite, and Dov likes that she likes him. Dov likes that she likes him, and he likes that she likes Chris, and it isn't fair.

Because she likes Chris better, and Dov-he's going to the lowest circle of hell for the this, the one reserved for traitors-Dov wants to be the one she likes the most.

He's not sure when it happened-sometime during his pathetic, inner monologue, he's sure-but he's started palming himself through his boxers.

He is a terrible friend.

He is a terrible person.

His hand slips beneath the waistband and Dov tells himself that, no, he is not going to do this. He is going to stop, right this very instant, and not jerk off to the sound of his best friend fucking the girl they both love.

Only, his hand doesn't listen, and he finds himself falling into the same rhythm as the bed banging into the wall, as Gail's moans and swears and breathy "Chris"s, as Chris's grunts and groans and little whimpers.

He comes, unbelievably hard and pitifully quick, with Gail's name on his lips. A near silent cry, an almost unspoken lament.


It actually started like...

You know what? Fuck it. Dov doesn't know how or when it started. He doesn't know when he went from thinking that Gail Peck was possibly the worst person on the planet to thinking she was kind of the most awesome being in the universe. He doesn't know how he manage to fall in love with his best friend's girl.

Because it had started before Gail was Chris's girl. Back when they were all a bunch of stupid rookies and Gail Peck-mean, bitingly sarcastic, white-shirt-in-the-making Gail Peck; Beautiful, viciously funny, surprisingly sensitive Gail Peck-had laughed at his jokes. And it had kept growing from there when he wasn't looking, wasn't paying attention.

When he had let his mouth shoot off when he didn't have a damn clue what he was talking about, and for just a moment he got to see the cascading waves of so, so much emotion walled up behind those icy blue-gray eyes. When she'd hugged him so tightly after the thing with Luke's shooter. When she, drunk as hell and twice as adorable as usual, offered him a drink of her margarita straight from the blender she was drinking out of, and he accepted. When she'd held on to him for over a minute after the meth lab bomb, and she'd been shaking just as much as he had. When she moved in to help take care of Chris, and started being loud at night and taking too long showers and kicking his ass at DeathDomain.

Dov doesn't know how it started, when or how he fell in love with Gail Peck. Couldn't pinpoint the exact moment something flipped the switch in his head that turned off his brain and turned on his heart.

He just knows that he did. He just knows that he loves her.


This is how it ends:

Dov is doing his damnedest at mounted training because Gail shows up, sometimes, to watch Chris, and Dov would be okay with getting a little acknowledgement from her about how he doesn't always suck at everything.

It might also have something to do with that 27th guy, Aaron, that Chris is suddeny back to being the best of buddies with. Not that Dov is jealous. It's just that Chris is his best friend and his roomate, and, and...well, Chris is just his, okay? He doesn't care if it makes him sound like a petulant five year old clutching his favorite toy on the playground. He already has to share Chris with Gail, and Gail with Chris, and Dov doesn't want to have to share with anyone else.

So, Dov is riding his horse like a pro. Right up until he lands a little awkwardly on his final jump, and his everything starts to hurt. Like, seriously, take me to the hospital right the fuck now, hurt.

And then there are the pills. He takes him the way he's supposed to, to the letter of the prescription, because Adam was an addict and Dov doesn't ever want to be like him. But it doesn't matter because he starts feeling good. Loose and light, and all these words start falling out of his mouth that he thinks maybe he shouldn't say but he can't muster the give-a-damn to stop.

"...pretty much the most incredible girl that I've ever dated. The only thing wrong with her..."

"She's dating an idiot who's higher than a lab monkey?"

"No. The only thing that's wrong with her is that she's not you."

"What?"

"I mean, if she was you, or I was Chris , I'd believe in a love of the soul..."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"And I'd marry you. I would. Mhmm. And we'd open our presents on Christmas morning, not Christmas Eve, and I'd take a desk job. I'd hit fifty, I'd lose my hair, my mind. Listen to jazz and embarrass our kids. Our kids. With their straw colored hair and your eyes. And I'd wake up, every morning, and wonder at my dumb, dumb, dumb luck." He's kissing her hand, and she's looking at him with some mix of emotions he is't in the right mindset to understand, that maybe he couldn't puzzle out even if he wasn't high as a kite. "If I was Chris."

He tries to take it back when sobers up, not because he didn't mean it-he did, he meant it so much it fucking hurts-but because he knows she loves Chris and Chris loves her, and it was always going to be Gail and Chris, and he can see how good they are for each other. He doesn't want to get in the way of that.

"Don't." It isn't harsh or cruel, just kind of quiet and sad, and Dov thinks it's too late to take it back. The damage's been done and he can't undo it.

And, what the hell, he's still high enough to think that if it's already broken...

He kisses her. She kisses him back-for a fraction of a moment-and then her hands on his shoulders, pushing him away, and she's shaking her head and saying "No. No, no, no, no." She gets out of the car, and she doesn't wait to see if he's following her, and Dov lets her go. Even in his drug-addled brain, he's starting to realize what he's done. Just how bad he's fucked up.

Turns out, just because it's already broken doesn't mean there isn't still something there to break.

And then Gail tells Chris, and then Dov tells Chris, and it's all a huge mess he can't seem to fix no matter what he does. He's just making it worse, but he doesn't know how to stop it, how to make it better instead.

"Did you kiss her?"

"No!" Only, he had, hadn't he? "Yes."

That was probably the wrong answer, but it had been the truth. Chris is grabbing him, throwing him into the squad car, and this isn't the time or the place, but this is when it's happening.

"Shut up! Just shut up. Don't try and talk this thing down like everything's okay! I thought the two of you were just staring to get along, with the forzen drinks and video games, but it makes sense now. You were waiting for your opportunity."

"No. No, Chris, I wouldn't do that to-" He wouldn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't. Whatever his weird feelings for Gail, whatever idle thoughts he let traipse through his head sometimes, he wouldn't ever do anything that would cost him Chris. Chris is his best friend. And that doesn't always mean something to some people, but it means a whole lot to Dov, and he would never have ever said a word to Gail about his feelings if he'd been sober enough to stop himself. Because he would never let himself do that to Chris.

"Would you shut up! Shut up, Dov. Just shut the hell up."

Then the SUV and the suspect and the little kid and "We are not okay just because you almost died. Again."

And worse, crushingly worse, Gail coming home. This is her home, she lives here, and he's ruined it. She looks shattered, and his girlfriend opens her mouth-and he'd thought she was perfect except for all the parts of her that weren't Gail, but he was so, so wrong because how can she not see that this is not okay? Everything is not okay-and asks where Chris is.

"Um, he's out. We had a talk, and, uh, and then he left." She looks right at him when she says it. To really drive the point across that this is all his fault. He did this to her, to Chris, to all of them.

"I get the feeling that she doesn't really like me."

"It's not you; it's me."

He breaks up with Sue later that night. It isn't fair to her, to be wanting Gail so much while she starts falling in love with him. And it isn't right of him to distract himself with his own perfectly functional relationship after shredding the relationship between the two people who matter most to him.

They're miserable because of what he did; it's his fault, and he deserves to be miserable too.

AN2: Let me know what you think.